TLDKTransport Layer Development Kit

Keith WilesPrincipal Engineer @ Intel

2

Legal Disclaimer• General Disclaimer:

• © Copyright 2016 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Inside, the Intel Inside logo, Intel. Experience What’s Inside are trademarks of Intel. Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Technology Disclaimer:

Intel technologies’ features and benefits depend on system configuration and may require enabled hardware, software or service activation. Performance varies depending on system configuration. No computer system can be absolutely secure. Check with your system manufacturer or retailer or learn more at [intel.com].

Performance Disclaimers:

Cost reduction scenarios described are intended as examples of how a given Intel- based product, in the specified circumstances and configurations, may affect future costs and provide cost savings. Circumstances will vary. Intel does not guarantee any costs or cost reduction.

Results have been estimated or simulated using internal Intel analysis or architecture simulation or modeling, and provided to you for informational purposes. Any differences in your system hardware, software or configuration may affect your actual performance.

TLDK (Transport Layer Development Kit)

• TLDK is to provide a clean set of ‘C’ libraries to enable network protocol handling at the application layer

• TLDK will provide IPv4/v6 and TCP/UDP protocols along with others as required for normal network operation

• Goal is to provide a very high performance network stack with termination support for applications using VPP and DPDK

• TLDK will provide a set of libraries to allow for applications to build a complete network stack support• Including a high performance non-socket type application

interface• Including a socket layer for applications linked with the

application• Including a LD_PRELOAD socket layer to run native Linux

applications

TLDK (Transport Layer Development Kit)

• TLDK is not a normal network designed stack!• TLDK has turned the network stack upside down for better performance

• Network protocols stack is driven by the application needs• Normal network stack designs drive packet into the protocols, then to

the application• In TLDK the packets are per-filtered to a given DPDK core/thread• The application then drives the packets into the stack when it needs the data

not before• The design attempts to keep the CPU cache warm and only consume processor

cycles when needed• The goal is to move multiple packets thru the stack at a time similar

to DPDK and VPP vector like processing of packets to utilize the cache correctly

• Normal stacks drive data from the bottom up and TLDK drives the data from the top down• Vector packet processing method reduces cycle overhead per packet

VPP

TLDK Uses case with VPP

DPDK

Physical Layer

Application LayerTLDK:• Handles packet I/O and protocol processing of

packets• Application sets up the UDP/TCP protocol contexts

and then calls I/O routines in TLDK to start processing packets

VPP Fastpath• Using VPP as the first layer for packet processing

before packets are sent to the application layer

Physical Layer:• Ports and other devices like crypto, compression, …

DPDK:• DPDK provides the I/O abstraction to the physical

layer for the network devices. The DPDK could be optional here only if some other I/O layer is used.

TLDK

Control ornon-TLDK pktsTLDK pkts

Cont

rol P

lane

VPPoptional

TLDK Application Layer break down

DPDK

Physical Layer

Socket Application

Application Layer:• The application layer utilizes the TLDK library to process

packets for UDP and TCP

Purpose Built Application:• A purpose built application is one that uses TLDK APIs

directly and is built to use these APIs• Highest performance is expected with this design

BSD Socket Layer:• A standard BSD socket layer for applications using

sockets in its design• A lower performance is expected, but allows for current

socket type applications to be ported to the system

LD_PRELOAD Socket Layer:• LD_PRELOAD is used to allow a ‘native binary Linux’

application to use the accelerated path of VPP/DPDK• The performance should be a bit better, but does allow

these native binary applications to work without any change

TLDK

Control ornon-TLDK pktsTLDK pkts

BSD Socket layer

LD_PRELOADSocket layer

Native Linux Application

Purpose built TLDK Application

Current Status of TLDK• The project is under the FD.io a Linux Foundation project• FD.io Wiki Page (https://wiki.fd.io/view/Main_Page)• TLDK is located at: https://wiki.fd.io/view/TLDK• Source Code at: git clone https://gerrit.fd.io/r/tldk

• Current code base includes an optimized UDP implementation

• Currently working on TCP implementation • Each Wednesday at 10am CST is the TLDK community

meeting• Meeting info: https://wiki.fd.io/view/TLDK/Meeting

• Additional ideas and contributions welcomed!

TLDK - Status Update

Thank you for attending, any questions?